DRAMATIC STORY OF ESCAPE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 88, Issue 127, 30 May 1944, Page 5

DRAMATIC STORY OF ESCAPE

ALLIED AIRMEN IN GERMANY

TUNNEL BUILT TO GET OUT OF “ IMPREGNABLE ” PRISON

Recd. 6 pm. London, May 29. Claiming that it is the first full and authentic account of a mass escape of 76 British Allied Air Force members from Stalag Lu.t 111, a prisoner-of-war camp at Sagan, the Daily Telegraph gives prominence to a story from a Stockholm correspondent, saying the men escaped through a tunnel which took more than a year to dig. The correspondent states: “The epic of the Sagan tunnel was first told to me over three weeks ago by a friend from Breslau, but only now can the main details be made public. The Germans long boasted that Stalag Luft 111 was surrounded by a complex system of electrified wire, and, with sentries armed with tommy-guns, backed up by searchlights, was ‘escape proof.' Special Nazi officials, nicknamed ‘Ferrets,’ regularly visited the camp, equipped with long steel skewers fitted to wooden handles, with which they rrobed for tunnels. “It is considered that the Germans’ rage at. Allied airmen breaking out from this monumental prison camp was the reason behind the Germans being suspected to the cold-blooded murder of 47 escaping officers. “Wing-Commander ‘Smith,’ whose real name cannot be revealed, was the determined hero who organised the escape. He began the tunnel inside the dormitory of a building housing the officers’ quarters. ‘Smith.’ using his peacetime knowledge of engineering. worked out a design for 450* feet cf tunnel, which he calculated would emerge just outside the outer bolt of wire, under the shadow of surrounding trees. “The Germans estimated + hat it took ‘Smith’ and his companions 15 months to excavate the tunne 1 . Working in relays, they hid the earth which they dug out. Thev had to scrabble against hard undersoil, in a narrow burrow, which, because it was origin-

.ally forest country, was still a maze lof thick, gnarled roots, around which | the battling prisoners had to dig a tortous way. The air in the tunnel was so foul that many of the diggers must have been overcome and nearly suffocated. “The work was at last finished. The officers must have drawn lots for the order in which to leave. Timetables were arranged for each man, which he would have to follow to a split second to avoid the sentries’ prying searchlights. Just after dark, on • a moonless ni<»ht last March, the first man shook hands with Wing-Com- | mander ‘Smith’ and dropped from [Sight into the mouth of the tunnel. I Seventy-six had escaped before the sentries discovered the tunnel.’’ i The correspondent said a friend |f”om Breslau told him a general Ii alarm was issued and the province of Silesia became a madhouse. Battalions of soldiers were turned out to comb the Silesian woods. Polic? dogs, blood- . hounds and the whole civilian popu- | lation over a wide area was mobilised to join in a day and night manhunt. Armed members of the Gestapo searched travellers at every wayside halt. Trams and buses were stopped and passengers ordered to descend for investigation. The informant said: “It was a sensation which, for the time being, completely overshadowed the invasion or the war in Russia. People walked, cycled, or rode for miles to get a glimpse of the famous tunnel. They found the camp surrounded by detachments of Himmler's dreaded Security Police, but even these could not stop tongues wagging. “We heard later that the camp commandant, and the whole contingent guarding Stalag 111 on the night of the escape, had been removed in disgrace, and either shot, or sent to penal battalions.”